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Selected chiefs, elected councillors and hybrid democrats: popular perspectives on the co-existence of democracy and traditional authority*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2009

Carolyn Logan
Carolyn Logan*
Affiliation:
Deputy Director, Afrobarometer, and Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, 303 S. Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
*
Email: clogan@msu.edu
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Abstract

The long-standing debate about the proper role for Africa's traditional leaders in contemporary politics has intensified in the last two decades, as efforts to foster democratisation and decentralisation have brought competing claims to power and legitimacy to the fore, especially at the local level. Questions persist as to whether traditional authority and democratic governance are ultimately compatible or contradictory. Can the two be blended into viable and effective hybrid systems? Or do the potentially anti-democratic features of traditional systems present insurmountable obstacles to an acceptable model of integration? Survey data collected by the Afrobarometer indicate that Africans who live under these dual systems of authority do not draw as sharp a distinction between hereditary chiefs and elected local government officials as most analysts would expect. In fact, popular evaluations of selected and elected leaders are strongly and positively linked. They appear to be consistently shaped by each individual's ‘leadership affect’, and by an understanding of chiefs and elected officials as common players in a single, integrated political system, rather than as opponents in a sharply bifurcated one. Moreover, there is no evident conflict between supporting traditional leadership and being a committed and active democrat. Rather than finding themselves trapped between two competing spheres of political authority, Africans appear to have adapted to the hybridisation of their political institutions more seamlessly than many have anticipated or assumed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 101 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Michael Bratton and E. Gyimah-Boadi, as well as the editor and two anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Modern African Studies, for their very helpful comments and critiques. The author, however, bears full responsibility for the paper's contents.

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